Mostly Marys consists of 5 multi-instrumentalists well-known for their stunning 3 part harmonies. Since forming in 2017 as a quartet, and then becoming a quintet when adding mandolin in 2025, they play all over the greater Bay Area including a current monthly residency at Berkeley’s famed Cheese Board Collective, Grass Valley’s California Bluegrass Association Father’s Day Festival, Oakland’s annual Oaktoberfest and the El Cerrito Free Folk Festival. Their shows are lively and fun, engaging the audience with high-energy danceable songs and fiddle tunes, slower heartfelt waltzes, originals, blues, and out of the box Americana songs.
Oaklanders Mary Cranley (fiddle, vocals, guitar) and Mary Schriner (banjo, harmonica and vocals) started playing together as a duet when they realized their voices had a special blend. They met El Cerrito’s Scott Underwood (bass, train whistle, shruti box) at Berkeley’s Manning Music studio, and for a short time they were a trio back when the name Mostly Marys made the most sense. When San Francisco’s Ryan Harlin (guitar, vocals, banjo) joined the local bluegrass jam scene, they started gigging together and decided that 2 out of 4 musicians named Mary was still technically mostly Marys.
After years of saying how nice it would be to have a mandolin player in the mix, they recruited Berkeley’s Allen Samelson (mandolin, fiddle, guitar, vocals) who seamlessly fit into the mix, bringing the total number of non Marys to 3, creating consternation among some listeners, but supplying the band with endless in between song banter defending the ratio.
Learn more at mostlymarys.com.